Give thanks for editorial writers (No, really)

MCTWhen you sit down to a delicious feast today, give thanks for the editorial writer who made it happen -- Sarah Josepha Hale.

Don’t choke on your stuffing, but Thanksgiving, as a national holiday, was invented by a journalist — an editorial writer, as a matter of fact. So, while Gov. Chris Christie thinks we serve no purpose (unless we’re agreeing with him, of course), we say: Drumsticks!

Sarah Josepha Hale, a widow with five children, supported them as a writer. While composing poems (including “Mary Had a Little Lamb”), writing novels and editorials, and working as a magazine editor, she spent decades trying to persuade presidents and governors (and, ahem, governors who wanted to be president) to declare a scheduled national holiday of Thanksgiving.

According to a Los Angeles Times article, she first pestered them in an 1827 editorial: “We have too few holidays,” she wrote. “Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, should be a national festival observed by all our people ... as an esponent of our republican institutions.” (And before John Boehner starts thumping his chest, that’s republican with a small “R.”)

For the next three decades, Hale relentlessly pursued her dream with a turkey trifecta: She published mouthwatering Thanksgiving recipes, wrote poems and stories that oozed Thanksgiving themes, and cranked out a stream of editorials proposing an annual holiday. (Where were Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the major networks and the bloggers when she needed them?)

Even the bloody Civil War — which pitted region against region, state against state and brother against brother — couldn’t deter her from proposing a national holiday to replace local harvest celebrations, then scattered throughout the calendar:

“Would it not be a great advantage, socially, nationally, religiously, to have the day of our American Thanksgiving settled?” Hale wrote in 1863. “Putting aside the sectional feelings and local incidents ... would it not be more noble, more truly American, to become national in unity when we offer to God our tribute of joy and gratitude for the blessings of the year?”

Among her dozens of letters, she wrote one to Secretary of State William Seward, who shoved it under President Abraham Lincoln’s beard. Four days later, Grateful Abe issued a proclamation establishing the last Thursday in November, 1863, as a national Thanksgiving Day. The tradition lasted until 1939, when President Franklin Roosevelt tinkered with it.

In an attempt to give merchants (even those in Bergen County) a longer holiday shopping season during the Great Depression — part of his economic tool kit — FDR moved Thanksgiving to the next-to-last Thursday in November. Outrage ensued.

(Hey, he knew it would be controversial, that’s why he made the announcement while vacationing in Nova Scotia.)

Almost everyone objected — politicians, calendar manufacturers, football coaches ... even turkey farmers, who worried they wouldn’t be able to fatten their fowls fast enough. Veterans said an earlier Thanksgiving would infringe upon Armistice Day, Nov. 11.

A Pennsylvania lawyer sent FDR a telegraph: “Why don’t you just change Christmas to your birthday?” he asked. New Hampshire Sen. Style Bridges, a Republican, said FDR “might as well abolish winter.” (Which, to some of us, remains a terrific idea.)

Sixty-two percent of Americans opposed FDR’s move, according to a Gallup poll, and it left governors befuddled. So, 23 states celebrated Thanksgiving on Nov. 23, while 23 others observed it on Nov. 30. Colorado and Texas, believing you can never have enough cranberry sauce, scheduled two Thanksgivings. Wisconsin, the most appreciative state in the union, declared eight Thanksgiving days — with turkey every day.

(That was followed by an official week of naps. Okay, we made that up, but seriously, Wisconsin has been a very sleepy place ever since.)

FDR moved Thanksgiving twice more — each time to greater criticism — before returning the holiday to the final Thursday of November. Why all the fuss, he wondered. It had been “merely an experiment.”

(FDR’s tinkering, while bemoaned, was certainly better than President John Adams’ call for a day of fasting. He didn’t mention football, either.)

So today, as you gather your loved ones around the table, remember that — no matter what the Pilgrims say — America’s national day of Thanksgiving didn’t always exist. It took an editorial writer to make it happen. Be thankful for us. You, too, Gov. Christie.